by Fiona Maazel
38. I have to stop writing now; it’s time for me to go. I hear Martin at the door, at last.
It was time for Esme to go, and yet: more waiting. She had called her voicemail; there was a message from Ida: she and Crystal were ETA five minutes. Her child had been having fits all day, and now that Crystal was in the game, insofar as Esme’s name had been pucked across every news channel in town, Crystal had refused to bide Ida while Esme raced to Cincinnati.
“I need another pen,” she said.
Martin gave her two. He was her only ally left, though ally overstated the extent to which he would have her back if called to testify. No doubt a hearing was in the works.
“What?” she said, because he was looking at her.
“Nothing.” And then: “You’ve got rosacea.”
“It’s called crying.”
Martin said, “You don’t have much time. The people downstairs can ID you if anyone asks.”
“No one’s going to ask until I’m long gone.” She appraised herself in the mirror. “Did you bring your kit? I need work here and definitely here”—and she touched the skin girding her eyes. It was less swollen now but still pink and almost translucent.
Martin was at it in seconds.
“Just natural,” she said. “Like me, but not ruined. Like a mom who’s ecstatic to see her child and has no other care in the world but her.”
“Right.” He stepped away. These figments of joy were not anything he could heap on the expression she wore now and had, in fact, worn every minute since Thurlow Dan kidnapped her team and stopped responding to the lead negotiator. Also, science says people will recognize a happy face before a sad one, but only if the happy face is congruent with the emotional context these people have experienced to date. So if Ida was going to register the sparkle in her mother’s look (beta lenses that pooled with light) or the bow tie of crow’s feet at both eyes (to simulate motion of the orbicularis oculi muscle, which engages when you smile for real), if Ida was going to see in his work indices of happiness, she’d have to have known something of happiness, which she manifestly had not. She was nine years old with one foot in the grave.
Try and fail, try again. He crimped gelatin into wrinkle lines; Esme flocked her chin; and together, in haste, they produced a face that was, if not ebullient, not a billboard of despair, either.
He packed up his kit. Esme turned on the TV. Thurlow Dan had not been heard from in hours. There was rumor of a ransom tape—Just tell us what you want!—and, circling overhead, choppers with boys humping the skids and gunning for this cult leader of national import. The hostages had been identified, their families called. Jim’s name had not come up, but already he had put the whole thing on Esme: Anonymous sources close to the White House say this has been a rogue intervention. It will be resolved amicably. The parties responsible will be brought to justice. Where are these parties? Hard to say.
“You want the Weather Channel?” Martin asked.
A blizzard was rolling in. Great time to hit the road. Visibility nil. Or at least the nil of snow pelting the windshield like rice when your ship clicks into hyperdrive. Nine hours to Cincinnati, going on 10, 15, 40. Reagan National had just closed.
“Animal Planet?”
She looked up and it was cops, and kittens who needed to eat. “No.”
He continued to flip until his flipping got on her nerves, so she said, “Give it,” only she was out of range, the remote didn’t work, and where the hell were Crystal and Ida? Then, at last: a knock at the door that returned her to the state she was in.
“Should I go?” Martin said.
“No. You can stay.” Though what this meant was, Please stay, because the reproach bound up in every word that would fall from Crystal’s lips, mingled with Ida and her needs—the audacity and insistence of her needs—would undo what chance Esme had to disarm the blast of fate that said she was going to give up on everything; why not start now?
“Mom!” The voice a squall and the child barreling into the room, headed for her mother but stopped short by the sight of Martin, who made her blushy and knock-kneed. Here was a man of such intimacy with her mother, she might have begrudged him the time except that maybe, for this intimacy, he was also her dad.
“Hey, kiddo,” Martin said, and tousled her hair, which was clipped on either side with ruby barrettes and not remotely inviting of a tousle, but what did Martin know? He had six brothers and an affenpinscher named Joe.
“Hi, muffin,” Esme said, and she twirled her finger in the air to encourage Ida to show off the new coat Esme had left for her this morning. Snow leopard with hot-pink satin lining. “You like it?” she said. “You look ready for Hollywood.”
Ida smiled but took off the coat and tossed it on the bed as though she’d caught whiff of a bribe. She was in blue leggings tucked into snow boots, and a cable-knit zip hoodie whose sleeves were too long and balled in either fist. Apparently, this was a stay against anxiety newly added to an arsenal of thumb sucking, teeth grinding, and rationing of her stuffed animals into family groups of three.
Esme tried to roll up her sleeves, but Ida demurred. Said, “This place is creepy. Why are we in a hotel?”
Esme looked to Martin, who was suddenly married to the reorganizing of his kit, and then to Crystal, still by the door, who smiled horribly and said, “I told Ida you’d explain everything when we got here.”
But how much was left to explain? And what were the odds Ida still didn’t know? CNN had been breaking revelations about the miscreant Esme Haas every five seconds. Ida was out of school, which meant Esme could not palm off the responsibility on some bratty kid calling her names and spilling the beans, because it was all the talk at breakfast and at dinner, too. In theory this should have come as a relief, but no. Esme didn’t want to be the one to tell Ida. Tell her what? Your mother is going away for a long time.
“Yeah,” Ida said. “There’s news vans on our front lawn. It’s kinda weird.”
Esme took her by the wrist but got sweater sleeve instead. “Did you talk to anyone? Did anyone take your picture? This is important, Ida. Tell me. I won’t be mad.”
She let go of the sleeve. She worried the vibrato in her voice communicated panic.
“Just one,” Ida said. “He was nice.”
“A reporter, honey? What did he look like?”
But Ida had grown shy. She toed the carpet with her boot and said, “I dunno,” shrugging and balling her sweater.
Esme asked if Crystal saw the guy. She had not. She was, she said, too busy patronizing the Helix coffers with her allowance to notice, not that Esme knew anything about it. Okay, so she was not just angry but hurt. And maybe even confused. The Helix was her first adult passion, and now it was being tested, and because in the nascence of any passion there was not supposed to be doubt, she felt cheated.
“Well,” Esme said, and she gestured for Ida to come sit next to her on the bed. She needed to regroup and adopt a suitable interrogation technique. “What did you do today, turnip? After skating, I mean.”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Because I left you some DVDs for when you got home. They were on the kitchen table.”
Ida paused to recall which movies and did the thing Esme was hoping for, which was to establish a baseline for truth telling from here on out: she looked right and snarled her upper lip, which was already too thin and blanched to rank as an asset. Esme smiled. Amazing how the second you objectify someone you love, she becomes at once less and more beautiful.
“They were boring,” she said. “I’ve seen them. ScoobyDoo is for babies, anyway.”
“There were some other movies, too,” Esme said. “But I guess the reporters were more interesting.” She added this last bit casually, even sighed a little, like: Oh well, this country’s romance with the press has been in evidence for centuries untold, no harm done.
Ida perked up slightly. “Yeah, they were nice to me.”
They. So before it was one; now it was many.
The DoD had arms.
“So you talked to them through the gates, honey? That’s a long walk from the house, and it’s cold out!”
“Mo-om,” Ida said, annoyed. “Don’t you listen? They came up to the lawn. The back patio, too.”
Crystal popped a candy in her mouth. She said, “I guess it won’t surprise you to find out Rita fired me.”
Esme shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“You got fired?” Ida said. She was gauging the mood of the room, trying to decide if this was funny or not. It was not.
“Yes. Because when your boss’s husband gets abducted, sometimes your boss thinks it’s your fault. She fired me from her bed. How humiliating.”
“What’s abducted?” Ida said.
“What, indeed,” Crystal said. “Sometimes it means being stolen from your perfectly honest life in foster care and thrown in with people you don’t know at all.”
“Sometimes,” Martin said, getting into the spirit of things, “it’s like those alien movies, you’ve seen those, where people get invited to hang out on another planet for a while.”
“Invited,” Crystal said.
“Enough,” Esme said. “Can we just talk about the reporters, please?”—forgetting she was trying to finesse her daughter and blowing the effort because Ida gave up on the adult discourse and retrieved an activity book from her knapsack. Esme could not help but notice that not a single animal was colored solid or even coherently. Why couldn’t her daughter keep to the lines?
“Ida, you only just got here. Don’t you want to pay me a little attention?” Esme was being weighed against the Little Mermaid and found wanting. “Just for a second?”
Ida rolled her eyes and said, “Ohhhkay,” and then, without prelude, knocked her head against her mother’s shoulder. Not hard, but insistent.
“Turtle, it’s okay. It’s your birthday soon, maybe we’re going to take a vacation. Just us two. Maybe sooner, if you can tell me something about the reporter you talked to.”
“Can we visit Ma and Pop?”
Esme nodded, and the words came out before she could stop them. “Sure, honey bun. Sure. Your grandparents miss you a lot.”
She was glad to be pressing Ida’s forehead to her neck, because in no way could she make eye contact with her. Already Crystal was remonstrating with jaw open and lids drawn so far back in disbelief they looked ready to dip behind her eyeballs. Even Martin shook his head.
What was worse than manipulating your daughter? Than lying in ways for which she would never forgive you? What was worse was your unstable DoD contact come to snatch your kid as collateral lest you cough up his name to the press. Jim had already left Esme unconscious on the bathroom floor. Who knew what he’d do next.
“So, the reporter,” she said. “Was he fancy? Like, in a suit and tie? Did he know your name?”
But Crystal had had enough. She said, “No, okay? No. Just normal press guys.”
“Okay, good.” It was the answer Esme wanted, the tension chased from her body, the lights gone out, only Ida saw it wrong and so, pawing in the dark, she said, “Yeah, but you didn’t see the one guy talking to me. You can’t see everything I do!” followed by her storming the bathroom. Slam went the door, though it was broken already.
Esme stood. Tried to think. Were there any safe places left to send Ida? School was out; even the English-speaking lycée in Haiti was out, because that was where all the spook kids went. As for the few at the DoD who had been briefed on the Taskforce for the Infiltration and Dismantling of the Helix, they were smote with amnesia—Esme Haas? Never heard of her—and thus unavailing of protections in vogue among mafia turncoats and spies. So that was out. Only place she could think of was her parents’ cabin in North Carolina, though Ida could hardly stay there alone.
Crystal said, “I’d better take her home,” and motioned at the bathroom. They could all hear Ida crying. Esme shook her head; there was only one thing to do. “Why not let Martin take her to the mall first. Buy some new clothes. Toiletries, too. Pajamas are fun.” Then, raising her voice, “That sound good, Ida? How about we take that trip right now.”
The door opened a wedge, the child nodding, eyes floorward.
Esme squatted. “Now, listen,” she said. “I know things seem a little weird, but everything’s fine. Even if they don’t seem fine, they are. Also, I have a surprise for you. Martin will tell you in the car.” And as Ida looked warily at her mother and her mother at Martin and Martin at his phone, to make sure it was on for when Esme texted him instructions the second they left the hotel, an NPR commentator broadcast the news: the FBI had just issued Thurlow Dan an ultimatum. Come out or we’re coming in. And, by way of subtext: If the hostages die, it’s on you.
By now it was nighttime, which meant nothing would happen at the Helix House until dawn. Chances of a botched raid were high, higher still in the dark. The feds would wait.
When Esme saw Ida had fallen asleep, the release in her chest was awful. Had she really not been breathing? She was, quite obviously, afraid of her child. The child who was assiduous in the upgrading of her rage, so that by the time she got to Esme’s age, she would have rarefied her temper into a bid for the sublime. Already, it was bracing. In sleep, though, people forget themselves, or come into the selves they’ve spent most of their lives trying to repress. Ida was fetal, with knees and forehead sewn to Esme’s side. She had released the day’s hatred and said with the array of her body what she’d been feeling in secret: Mom, I need you; Mom, don’t leave. Her hair was in a twist, clutched in her palm. Esme checked her forehead, and, yes, she hoped it was warm, because whatever chance the world gave this mother to source her child’s problems elsewhere, she would take it. Ida mumbled and flung her arm around her mother’s waist. Esme felt Ida’s nails dent her skin and thought that if she could just break Ida of need in sleep, it would do wonders for her awake. Also, she could not write like this. She freed her hand from her hip and slipped out of bed. For a second, Ida cast about the mattress; then she rediscovered her hair.
In every life, an unraveling. Esme’s had started at her parents’ just a few weeks ago. Surprise! She had dropped in for a visit. She had taken a bus and ended up calling from the road. Her dad answered. He was hard of hearing, so it was: Who? Leslie? About what? And then her mother, who said, Hello, Esmeralda, though this name was not even on her birth certificate; it was simply what Linda called her when she was angry. Esme didn’t get a word in before she was hissing about Ida. Yes, of course they hadn’t told her about her father, because, duh, instructions from the butler—P.S. Don’t tell Ida she is cognate with a cult leader—were binding in every universe, except, Jesus, who taught Esme to parent like this? Because, as far as her mom knew, she’d done a good job with Esme, and her father had, too.
Their cabin was an hour afield of a sizable community in any direction. A two-bedroom in the woods. Esme understood wanting to live modestly despite their wealth, but she could never understand the privation of their lifestyle. Her dad drove an ’88 Chevy pickup. The clutch was shot; the truck wouldn’t go over forty or, who knew, might blow up if it did. When he got to the bus stop, it took him many tries just to get out of the cab. It had been months since her last visit, but he looked the same. When you are seventy-seven, what difference does the fluting of your skin make? She tried to give him a hug. One of his hands alit on the small of her back, while the other—and then she realized he wasn’t wearing his arm.
She’d asked, “Where’s the arm?”
He said, “I barely even need two arms nowadays.”
She got in the truck, in the driver’s seat, because technically her father was not supposed to get behind a wheel, with or without the prosthetic. Still, one had to wonder how he drove stick without it, maybe he used his shoulder to steer while he switched gears, and then she shuddered in fear for everyone else on the road.
Since she was always afraid to ask how were things at the house, she asked about his volunteer job. He was a docent
at an astronomical research institute sited deep in the forest. A former NASA base—from there One small step for mankind was relayed to the world—that the DoD commandeered in ’81 for “listening.”
“Oh, they don’t need me much. It gets pretty dull at times.”
“What’s the big question these days?”
He looked at her wanly. “What is dark matter.”
Esme snorted. Five minutes together, and already they were negotiating the extent to which he was allowed to grouse now that his favorite pastime, the Internet, had been restricted by her mother. He’d been spending hours a day chatting with people online, and Linda didn’t like it.
He coughed into his fist. The road went up the mountain in christie curves, the locals taking them fast and Esme wending along like Grandma. Her dad hammered the dash because no heat was coming up through the one vent aimed his way, and said, “That’s some kid you’ve got,” before whacking the dash again. She had no idea what this meant, though it probably meant nothing. For her dad, the world was middling. How’s the weather? So-so. How’s your grandkid? Fine.
If it was the truth Esme wanted, she needed to ask her mother. Or just stand within one hundred feet and Linda would tell her.
They got to the house. It had snowed, and because her parents never departed from the path to the road, the snow was untrammeled but for deer tracks and wild turkeys and, beautifully, a snow angel. Her daughter lived here. She thought she even saw her face peering out the window from behind a curtain, though the second they got out of the truck, the curtain stopped rustling and all was quiet.
The Helix had been making news for years, but by now it was making headlines. Rumors and gossip. Her parents didn’t have a TV, but they read the papers, and there was always the Internet. And, while they had never met Thurlow, they knew who he was. Esme didn’t think it would be long before her mother took it upon herself to tell Ida everything. Her plan was to hope she didn’t.